Think About Your Life

This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

For more information on our church, please visit grandparkway.org.

Let's get to the Bible.

James chapter 4.

James 4 · chapter mention

I'm going to start reading in in verse 1.

This is what the Bible says.

He says, What caused- remember last week we talked about wisdom, about about godly wisdom and ungodly wisdom, and he just continuing this thought and he says, What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and you do not have, so you murder.

You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have because you do not ask, and you ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says he yearns jealousy over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?

But he gives more grace.

Therefore it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourselves, therefore, to God.

Resist the devil, and he'll flee from you.

Draw near to God, and he'll draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Be wretched and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to gloom.

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.

The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law.

But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.

There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy.

But who are you to judge your neighbor?

Come now, you who say today or tomorrow will go in such and such town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.

Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil.

So, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is sin.

I want you to think about your life today.

And so I want you to think about your life so much that the title of the sermon today is think about your life.

Because the Bible is so practical and relevant and connected to everyday living in 2011.

It doesn't just apply to people back in James' day, it applies to you and I today.

And there's uh a couple of sections I want to break off and focus on.

And you say, well, we're gonna read James chapter four.

We did the whole thing.

Absolutely, but I want to break it off into five manageable pieces to give us to think about.

Five points that James says to us to think of to help us think biblically about our life.

And the first point is simply this that a passion for self is never enough.

That's the first four verses when he says, What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Is it not this that your passions are at war with you?

And your translation may say appetites or desires or your pleasures, but basically what James is talking about is your and my relentless commitment to get what we want.

Now let me just say this, beloved, that a life that is always oriented about around what you do not have produces violence.

Let me say it again.

A life that is oriented around.

Think Wall Street protesters.

All of a sudden they're down there and they're just gonna be pacifists and they've got signs and this, that, and the other, and now they're not getting their way.

No one's rolling out with checks and saying, hey, just for being unemployed and angry, here's some money.

So now they're gonna start tearing stuff up.

Because a life oriented around what you do not have always produces violence.

Maybe not in action, but in thought and intent and in motive and eventually in speech, but eventually it will come to action.

You you act on this sense that I do not have what I do, what I think I deserve.

You say, Well, where do you get that?

Right there in the Bible.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and you do not have.

So what do you do?

You murder.

It starts off in your head.

You desire it.

I deserve this, I need to have this.

I'm not getting it.

So by golly, I need to take responsibility for seeing that my needs get met.

So you murder.

You covet and you cannot attain.

So what do you do?

You fight and you quarrel.

Why?

Because a life that is always oriented around what you do not have eventually expresses itself in violence.

You do not have, by the way, James says, because you do not ask.

And you ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly.

Well, you mean you ask wrongly?

It's not manners, it's motive.

It's not be nicer when you pray.

It's not use some phrases that everyone said before, like our most kind and gracious Heavenly Father.

That doesn't move the heart of God because he sees the motive of our heart.

And he says, I'm not answering that prayer, because all you want me to do is just to satisfy you.

And you say, Well, what's wrong with that?

There's nothing wrong with that.

But if that's the be-all and end-all, everything's wrong with that.

Because we have a passion to be satisfied, and God has a passion to be glorified.

Now, in your thinking, those are either mutually exclusive, that's a tug of war, that's the unconverted mind.

Or that's the gospel.

You have a passion to be satisfied, and God has a passion to be glorified.

When I became a Christian, me being satisfied means that God gets glory.

Why else would the Bible say in Psalm 37:4, the verse we love to quote but seldom understand, delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalms 37:4

The Bible tells us, James tells us from the get-go that a passion for self is never enough.

And look at verse 4.

He he kind of uses strong language after he says all this stuff.

He says, You adulterous people.

And now when you read the Bible, don't just read the words, read the punctuation.

It's like he raises his voice and screams.

Now we've heard the word adultery and adulteress and adulterer so much, it no longer burns and jolts us.

As a matter of fact, if you're a man in America, you kind of think, well, it's kind of a rite of passage.

I should commit adultery somewhere.

No, you shouldn't.

Because James says, Oh, by the way, you adulterous people.

Now that's that you're like, what's that got to do?

It's not that, oh, because he goes on and says, hey, don't you know that friendship with the world, this enmity with God, therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

And you're thinking, well, that's kind of a big word to use right there.

Very appropriate word.

And here's what he's not saying.

He's not saying, hey, you're having an affair with yourself.

Hey, you're having an affair with the world.

No, what James is saying is you're not having a relationship with God.

And that's horrible.

It's not that you love the world.

It's not that everything about your life is about me getting what I want and literally to hell with what God wants.

You would get more offended that your pastor would say that than you would that you live that.

And the great theologian Jonathan Edwards said this about self-centered living.

He says that living for yourself is like getting excited that a candle has been lit and remaining indifferent to the rising of the sun.

It is going to be full of violent thought, violent motive, violent speech, violent action.

Why?

Because God created you and I for something more.

The second thing James tells us to think about our life is he says in verses 5 to 7 that submission is the proper response to grace.

It sounds bad to this point.

I mean, he's called them adulterers.

They murder, they fight, and they quarrel, and he screams at them and says, You adulterous people! Don't you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Are you kidding me?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Verse 5.

Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously, jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell within us.

But he gives more grace.

And if it's sounding bad at this point, James kind of throws out a lifeline and says this about God.

But he gives more grace, which is great news.

You should feel, I mean, if you're sitting there thinking, man, I think, yeah, it's not that I'm having an affair with the world or an affair with myself.

It's just that I'm not having the kind of relationship with God that the Bible calls me to.

Good news today, he gives more grace.

What's the response to that?

Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourselves, therefore, to God.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

When I say submission is a proper response to grace, and lets it sound or feel hopeless, James announces that great, hey, don't lose sight of this.

He gives more grace.

And the proper response to grace, see, here's my concern in American Christianity is that we got a bunch of great preaching, and we got a bunch of great churches, we got a bunch of great books that we sell at the bookstore, we got a bunch of great people, and a bunch of great worship, but we don't have that many people living great lives.

And people come to church and go, that's awesome.

My pastor did.

Well, our church has six sites, and we we broadcast our pastor here and there.

I don't care.

How are these people that go to these churches living?

Because that's the concern.

You you can have Charles Furzer, you can dig up your favorite preacher, you can have Billy Graham come every week.

It matters not one iota in your life unless it it traffics in your life.

You say, Well, what what what what what what do you mean?

See, here's my fear is that we have an insufficient response to grace.

It's not my fear, it's my observation.

Here's how you know that you have the wrong response to the grace of God.

If when tempted, you can if you're at the fork in the road and you're thinking, I know this is wrong, but boy, I want to do this.

I know this is wrong, but you know, I've had a hard week.

You know, I probably shouldn't look at that, think this, do that, talk to this person.

I know this is wrong, but but but it here's how you know you you you you it's not that you don't understand grace, you misuse grace.

Here's how you know when you're tempted, you if you console yourself with this thought, well, I know I can be forgiven.

I know, I know God forgives me.

You, my friend, it's not that just you you don't understand grace or you misuse grace, you to quote Hebrews 10, are insulting the spirit of grace.

You say, Well, I I I submission, just putting yourself before God in humility and brokenness and just kind of laying down before God is the only proper response to grace.

Thirdly, and this sounds horrible, and this self-loving, great self-image where we raise a generation of kids with a great self-image and zero God image.

This is gonna sound like heresy.

Thirdly, James says, think about your life with this.

Feeling bad is necessary.

Y'all are thinking you should never be alone ever again.

Yeah, you you should stop telling your kid.

Let me tell you something.

My dad's not a perfect man, okay?

But my dad said something to me as a kid when I would screw up, when he would tell me, don't do that.

And I'd look him in the eye and go, yes, sir, and go right out and do it.

My dad used to say this to me before and after he wore us out.

My dad would look at us.

This would get you locked up.

If you say this to your kid today at lunch, somebody will report you to CPS because we are a generation of cowards.

We're so afraid to endure our kids' wrath or something.

I stomped my family at Scrabble last night and gave them this.

And one of them said, one of my 14-year-old who turned 14 on Thursday and all of a sudden she got it all figured out.

Dad, why are you so competitive?

I'm not competitive.

To be competitive means you would have to be my equal.

You're not, okay?

I'm the winner and you're the loser, okay?

Right there, right there.

You want to polish my belt for me while I go to sleep?

Oh, mom says you're competitive.

She's a loser, too.

What else she's gonna say?

That's what losers say about the winner.

They're competitive.

I'm not competitive, I'm consistent, I'm used to winning.

Now, hold my trophy while I kiss your mother.

Oh, Dad.

No, Dad, no.

She went to bed gnashing her teeth.

Knocked on a door and said, You want to look at my trophy, my championship belt one more time before I go to bed?

No.

Tell all your friends.

Oh, I've been texting about you.

You think I care?

Tell your friends they're losers too.

They've all earned the right to be competitive because they've never won.

But here's what my dad used to say to us.

And here's the crazy thing, he meant it.

My dad, when we do something wrong, my dad would snap his finger and go, shame on you.

That sounds so horrible.

You haven't heard that in a long time, have you?

You should say that to your kids more when they screw up.

You should say, Hey, shame on you.

You should feel bad when you do the wrong thing.

When you lie to your parents, you should feel bad.

Don't stick your chest out like me.

If I got rights, you have no right.

You got responsibility.

Shut up and go to my room back there.

That's my room.

No, it's my room.

I paid the mortgage.

If I took away everything I gave you, you'd be the world's most naked hobo in 30 seconds.

Tell me about what you have.

Shame on you for thinking that too.

Now some of you, did you feel a minute ago when I told you what my dad said?

Y'all like, oh, no, no, yeah.

Because if you don't teach your kids to feel bad when they screw up and stop polishing their self-image where they're real shiny and think I'm the greatest thing in the world, you are gonna damn them.

You're gonna raise a sociopath.

Because the world isn't gonna worship them like you do.

The world's not afraid of them.

They're gonna go off to college and get their head kicked in.

And it's gonna be your fault.

Because you did not model what the Bible says.

The Bible says, hey, feeling bad is necessary.

Matter of fact, you should feel so bad sometimes.

You should fall to the ground and not eat and tear your clothes and put dirt on your hair.

Why else does the Bible say in verse 8?

Draw near to God, and he'll draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Repentance has always involved hand and heart.

One is a place of consideration, the other is a place of action.

Be wretched and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be torn to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Stop consoling yourself with the thought that you can be forgiven.

You should feel horrible for that.

Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will exalt you.

Stop exalting yourself.

See, we don't know enough.

The reason saying to your kids, hey, shame on you for lying to me like that.

Are you kidding me?

Is that the way you think you get to treat me?

What, what, what?

Because unless we understand that, we ain't gonna give it to our kids.

Your whole life will be spent exalting yourself.

And the Bible says, hey, if you just humble yourself, God will exalt you.

Are you raising kids that God will one day exalt?

You're not gonna have the opportunity.

You exalt them.

You tell them all the time, it's okay.

Your parents can get you out of that.

No.

Let them spend the night in jail.

Let them stay down there and realize, you know what?

I don't think I want to do this anymore.

Feeling bad, men and women, it's necessary.

And sin, by the way, is horrible.

Not because you got caught or you're not going to reach your potential or you might get kicked out of the National Honor Society, or you might not get into college, or whatever you're trying to motivate your kids with.

I remember speaking in a church here in our city one time, and a grown adult raised their hand and said, My son cannot stop having sex with his girlfriend.

I mean, I tell him he might get an STD or a bad reputation.

I mean, what can I tell him that will motivate him to stop that?

And I just said, How about the Bible says that's fornication and it's sin and God's gonna punish you for it.

And this church is so cool, and he if they meet in a movie theater.

And so they had conservatory seating, goes up, and they all just stared at me like and I'm not kidding.

Grown adults looked at each other and like, uh and the guy said to me afterwards, because they just got happier from there.

And the pastor said to me, one of the pastors said to me afterwards, uh, yeah, I don't know if you really connect it with our people.

Your people don't know the Bible because cowards like you don't preach it to them.

So, hey, don't worry about me connecting your people.

I wouldn't come back if you gave me$5,000 a day.

This is 90 minutes of my life, I'll never get back.

But you, my friend, and your pointed shoes and your bell bottom overpriced pants are gonna stand before God and give an account that you've robbed these people of the truth of God's word.

You can have church services and never be the church, and that's you.

And all your sick sights you got going around the around this place.

So, whatever you're gonna pay me for today, keep it.

I don't want you supporting a ministry you don't believe in, and I don't want taking money from a religious organization like yours that calls yourself a church and doesn't herald and value the gospel.

Well, don't, don't, man, don't be angry.

I'm not angry, I'm right.

And I went to church's fried chicken down the co down the street from this place.

And I was sitting there, feeling a little bit sorry for myself, kind of wondering, how much money were they gonna pay me?

Because in the moment I was all lathered up, I've given it to them.

Then I got stealed and I was like, wait a minute, I got I got a mortgage.

I have a mortgage, I got bills just like you.

My kid got braces.

You don't give those things away.

You gotta finance those things, it's like getting a car.

Like, how might is that?

What very clearly the Holy Spirit said, you believe it now?

Because sometimes saying the truth, it just makes you lonely.

Not lonely, but just alone.

People don't want to be around you.

It's easier to get back here and kind of go, oh man, tell us, you know.

If your life is only influenced by consequences and not understanding, you'll live in sin your entire life.

And you'll practice consequence avoidance.

So just get you a big box of condoms and do whatever you want.

In all areas of your life.

Just knock yourself out.

Just avoid the consequences.

Whatever you gotta do.

But if you want to think about your life, I'm just here to tell you, there's some times in my life and in your life where we need to weep and mourn and wail.

Fourth thing James tells us about thinking about our life is believe in the fullness of God's nature.

Look at verse 11 and 12.

He says, Do not, you say, what do you mean believe in the fullness of God's nature?

Well, that's what the Bible teaches.

Sometimes you gotta think when you come to church.

You can't just come and feel.

You gotta be still and block out whatever you're gonna eat for lunch and the fight you had this weekend with your husband or your wife or your kids, and just give your mind fully.

Look at verse 11.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.

The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law.

But if you judge the law, you're not a doer of the law, but a judge.

Verse 12 There's only one lawgiver and judge.

He who is able to save and to destroy.

But who are you to judge your neighbor?

You say, What do you mean believe in the fullness of God's nature?

It's verse 12.

There's only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy.

Destroy if you believe.

If you believe that, then you're able to not judge other people.

But see, here's the problem: you don't believe in the fullness of God's nature.

You don't believe what the Bible says in verse 12, where it says, hey, he who is able to save and destroy.

You think all God can do is save.

You don't tell your kids, hey, you mess with God and he might just kill you and take you home for making him look insufficient.

There's no fear of God before our eyes.

Come on, let's say like it is.

We just, well, you know, I don't care.

I'm gonna do what I want.

It's like a guy said the other day, I promise you, I don't go around looking for awkward conversations to get into.

They just find me.

I'm like a magnet for awkward verbal stupidity.

I get in a conversation with a guy and he says, and we've all heard this, well, my God's a God of love.

And I said, that sounds gross.

I'm like, don't say anything.

You ever shake up a Coke?

You're just shaking it up, and you can just shake it up, and everything's safe until you pop the top.

Or have you ever got a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke and dropped minto's in it?

Yeah.

Try that one with your kids outside.

That's what I feel like sometimes.

I love people, I love Jesus, I love lost people, I love church people.

It's easier to love lost people because church people have religious excuses for their stupidity, and it's like ah.

And here's one of them you hear all the time, and this person says, Well, my God's a God of love.

I don't, I mean, my we just have a different view of God.

And I said, Well, so you think that your God, that's yeah, God is love.

That's what the Bible said.

God's a God of love.

And I'm like, and then proof that I'm a Christian, the Holy Spirit said, Well, tell this person this.

If your God's a God of love and that all that's all He is, then you gotta do all the judging.

And I bet you you're a judgmental person.

Well, I'm not judgmental, but I have opinions.

See, you look at somebody like me and think I'm judgmental.

I'm just telling you, I love the truth.

I'm just telling you, God, if you believe the Bible, James chapter 4, verse 12 says, hey, there's only one lawgiver and judge.

James 4:12

You didn't give the law.

Well, that's your opinion.

No, I'm not the lawgiver.

There's only one lawgiver, and he's given the law, he's established it, he's laid it down.

He's not only lawgiver, he's judge.

He's not only able to save.

Good news, he's able to save, he's able to destroy.

Well, my God's a God of love.

Then you got to do all the judging.

Because your God's a coward and a wimp.

He has no wrath, all he has his love.

So when you sin, oh, he loves me.

So, it's just, yeah, whatever I do, he loves me.

Oh, I agree.

God doesn't stop loving because sometimes the highest expression of his love is his wrath.

Oh, that's not my God.

Let me tell you something.

God is fully able to save, and just as able to save, he is able to destroy.

And you say, Well, I can't get my head around that.

Not my fault.

I don't know what God you've been believing in.

But if you're thinking right now, I don't agree with that.

I disagree with you, Neil.

You're not disagreeing with me, you're disagreeing with the Bible.

There's one lawgiver.

And where there's a law, there's a judge.

And he's gonna judge.

So I don't have to.

You're freed up.

Think about your life in this term.

You don't have to sit in judgment, everybody.

You're freed up just to speak the truth to strangers in a Starbucks in Richardson, Texas, and they get so mad, and baristas come out behind the counter.

What did you say?

I said, if your God's a God of love, then you gotta do all the judging.

I bet you're a judgmental person.

I am not, you're a narrow-minded bigot.

Look over some old man who's reading the book Unbroken by Louise Anne Paris, a great book, by the way.

And he's just smiling.

I'm like, I got this, keep reading.

Come on, suck us.

And I'm just smiling.

And I'm just like, I mean, what are you what are you studying?

What are you gonna do?

I'm gonna go back and tell my people crazy things like, hey, it's necessary to feel bad.

Oh, God doesn't want us to feel bad.

Listen, if God was really like what you say, I wouldn't pray to him, I wouldn't believe in him, I wouldn't give him one iota of my time.

Matter of fact, I would go move in.

Well, I live with my boyfriend.

It's my body, I do what I want with it.

And this God of yours, all he can do is love you.

That's right.

You don't know God.

And if any of the rest of you, this is your God, you don't know God either.

And that doesn't make me judgmental.

That makes me right.

Because I'm just saying what the Bible says.

You feel it in here?

Good.

I'm not afraid of that feeling.

And y'all may come to, y'all may have to have a general population vote next week.

That's okay.

My search committee here will take me to lunch today.

50 bucks and a bucket of chicken.

I'm in.

I'm in.

So raise.

Fifthly and finally.

My clock up here is broken.

What time is it?

We okay on time?

Well, half these people care.

I don't, but the people that don't love Jesus enough, they care.

I'm not gonna say any names.

Fifthly and finally, eternity redefines everything.

Eternity redefines everything.

Verse 13 to 15.

Verse 13 to 17.

See, these people, they they they they he's talking to these wealthy merchants.

We'll get into this next week, and they're they're kind of boasting about, because see, here's the danger of money.

It makes you think that you're 10 feet tall and bulletproof, and you can do whatever you want.

That's why people with a lot of money build ostentiously offensive, stupid houses.

Don't know what else to do.

They just don't be mad at them.

They just don't know what else to do.

It's like garages with 13 cars.

Because they are the biggest thing they know.

I mean, feel sorry for them.

Teach your kids to feel sorry for them.

Not in an arrogant way, but in an understanding way.

What do you mean, eternity redefines everything?

He says, verse 13, come now, you who say today or tomorrow, we'll go into such and such town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.

Yet you don't know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

Great question to think about today.

What is your life?

I'm gonna tell you what it is, James says.

You're a mist that appears for just a little while and then vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we'll live and do this or that.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance and all such boasting is evil.

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is sin.

See, eternity, asking the question, what is your life, kind of clarifies and redefines everything.

It kind of establishes what is right.

You cannot realize what is right, just living a horizontal, me-centered life.

Because you'll find people at work.

You can go to work tomorrow and say, My preacher said this, and everybody in your department will go, he's an idiot.

I wouldn't go to that church.

You say, Well, that doesn't bother you?

No.

Because a passion for self is never enough.

They're just passionate for themselves.

What is your life?

By the way, the average age span for a male in America is 75.6 years.

Average age lifespan for a female is 80.3.

Ladies, you got five years of bliss coming to you at the end.

Hold out.

James says, What is your life?

He says, It is but a mist.

You are a mist that appears for a little while and vanishes.

Go home today.

And just blow your breath on your mirror and watch it go away.

That's your life against the backdrop of eternity.

Eighty years sounds like a long time, not against eternity.

James is asking, is this really how you want to spend your life as an adulterer before God, saying, one day I'm gonna make it right, one day I'm gonna stop, one day I'm gonna start, one day I'm gonna speak up, one day I'm gonna become who everybody thinks I am, one day I'm gonna really start living.

Most of you it's gonna be when you get the diagnosis.

It's stage three.

We don't think we can do anything.

I better kick it into gear.

No, the time to kick it into gear was a long time ago.

By the time most of us adults in this room and listening to this podcast kick it into gear, quote unquote, your kids will be so repulsed by your hypocrisy, it won't matter.

They'll be so full of rage that you said one thing and lived another.

Like, come on.

Stephen Jobs, the man that co-founded Apple Computer, died recently.

There's been a lot of stories about his life.

And one that I found particularly interesting, he said, when I was 17, I read a quote that went something like this.

If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.

Stick with me.

He's 17 when he read that.

Can you imagine writing that down and giving it to your 17-year-old today?

Am I going to get some more allowance for reading this?

If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you will most certainly be right.

And he went on to say this.

It made such an impression on me.

And since then, for the past 33 years, made such an impression on him as a 17-year-old that every day, since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, if today or the last day of my life, would I want to do what I'm about to do today?

And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

James asked the same question, what is your life?

And so I just want to give us four questions to think about, to kind of answer the question, what is our life?

Number one, is this my life or somebody else's?

Am I living my life or am I or am I living somebody else's idea of what I should be doing?

Number two, is this connected to what I believe to be ultimate?

I'm not a very smart man.

I'm not mean.

I'm not critical.

I'm not judgmental.

Maybe thinking, well, I disagree with that.

Who cares?

Put me at the top of the list of people that don't.

Not because I don't love you, I just know myself.

I know.

I don't want to waste my life saying things like a grown person said to me in an email again this week.

Well, I didn't say anything because I knew how you'd respond.

Then please email me the winning powerball numbers.

Since you know everything.

See, that's the way cowards get out of awkward conversation.

Well, I disobeyed the Bible because I knew what you would say.

No, you didn't.

Who do you think you are?

See how easy it is to go to church your whole life and think you've earned the right to be stupidly disobedient.

And everyone's got to go, well, okay, that's great.

No, it's not great.

Because I just want to live connected to what I believe to be ultimate.

And for me, the Bible is ultimate.

Thirdly, think about your life with this question.

Is it meaningful?

Is it meaningful?

Is it, I mean, does it have a substantive purpose to it?

I don't mean every day you get up and go, whoa.

Fourthly, does it satisfy me and glorify God?

Because you have a passion to be satisfied.

Don't lay that down.

But if you're a Christ follower, if you're a disciple of Christ, if you're a Christian, not just if you go to church, if this gets you out of jail with your wife, that doesn't make you a Christian.

But as a believer, this exchange happens when you become a Christian.

My desire, God's desires become my desire.

So me being satisfied means that God gets glorified.

And so when I read in 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul says, Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all for the glory of God, I go, absolutely.

So what is your life today?

Hold your hands out.

Because death no longer has hold over you.

And because death has lost its sting.

All you have left is life.

Make sure that the life you're living is really your life connected to what you believe to be ultimate, meaningful, and God glorifying.

Depart now and live that life.

In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.